Keywords

The question that drives this book is: Who do I need to be and become, and how do I need to behave, to work well in public life with people who want and value different things?

This introductory chapter sets out the challenge of public leadership when working with diverse publics. It distinguishes between leaders and leadership and summarises some recent thinking about public leadership and managerialism in public administration. It welcomes a recent shift of focus in public policy education from training analysts to cultivating leadership, introduces the use of competencies and competency frameworks, and proposes to draw on political theory and social ethics to frame a limited set of interpersonal competencies (soft skills) as ethical competencies (hard soft skills) for public leadership in contexts of pluralism.

1.1 People and Politics

During the 16 years I have worked as a public policy advisor, the hardest challenges I have faced have not involved technical problems of policy analysis but dealing with conflict between individuals and groups who have different, competing and conflicting interests and values.

In politics and public life, we do not deal with a single, undifferentiated public but with plural, diverse publics. And as Jean Hartley (2018) notes, it is rare for the diverse publics within a specific local context to agree on a single public goal or objective:

Instead, leadership has to work with, and negotiate with, many different stakeholders who have divergent values, goals, ideologies and interests. There may be complex negotiations between multiple, cross-cutting and competing interests before it is possible to create a coalition with a degree of actionable shared purpose. Contest is endemic. Part of the work of public leadership—if it is to achieve public value—is to work with multiple publics … in order to channel contest in ways which are productive and which avoid where possible antagonistic bi-polar zero-sum conflict (p. 207).

This, then, is my question: How can I work well (effectively and ethically) in public life with people who want and value different things—playing my part to determine and achieve agreed public goals and objectives, and going about this in a principled way, with professional and personal integrity?

Two assumptions underlie that question, why I ask it, how I frame it and how I set about answering it. I elaborate on the first assumption in Chap. 2—public leadership cannot avoid dealing with the fact of pluralism and the conflict generated by diversity in proximity. We can homogenise milk, but not people. To be anywhere near effective in public life, we must learn to live and work with difference, and with the conflict generated by our unavoidable dealings with people who want and value different things.

My second assumption is that the kind of politics that can best manage conflict without recourse to violence or the threat of violence is found within some form of liberal democracy.

There is no perfect political system, set of institutional arrangements, policies or programmes to manage conflict between competing cultures, values and conceptions of the good. We can, however, learn from our own past and identify better and worse political arrangements for managing pluralism and conflict in public life.Footnote 1

Three approaches to managing (or not managing) pluralism and the conflict that results from it should be resisted for reasons that will become clear in the chapters that follow.

  • Authoritarian government is characterised by concentrated central power, limited political freedoms, and marginalisation and repression of political opposition. Authoritarian governments enforce assimilation and conformity to state-sanctioned values and ways of life. They include absolute monarchies, religious theocracies, fascist states, communist regimes, military dictatorships and democratic republics that are democratic in name only.

  • Populist nationalism may be democratic but denies the legitimacy of many different social groups and acts on behalf of a dominant majority to pit “a virtuous and homogeneous people against a set of elites and dangerous ‘others’ who are together depicted as depriving (or attempting to deprive) the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, identity and voice” (Albertazzi & McDonnell, 2008, p. 3). Populist leadership often trades on celebrity-style, “presidential” politics, with larger-than-life, “heroic” figures promising to ward off economic crisis, floods of immigrants and other enemies within and without the state (Crosby & Bryson, 2018, p. 1265).

  • Fragile or failed states demonstrate weak state capacity and/or legitimacy, with a breakdown or absence of social norms, values and social cohesion, and periodic episodes of sectarian violence.Footnote 2

The option that on balance best enables us to live with conflict without recourse to violence is some form of political liberalism in which institutions and governmental practices are governed, conducted and constrained by democracy and the rule of law.Footnote 3

Liberal democracy is not a perfect system of government, but it is the “least bad” of a range of governmental options. As Francis Fukuyama (2018a) explains:

Successful democracy depends not on optimization of its ideals, but balance: a balance between individual freedom and political equality, and between a capable state exercising legitimate power and the institutions of law and accountability that seek to constrain it. Many democracies try to do a whole lot more than this, through policies that try to promote economic growth, a clean environment, consumer safety, support for science and technology, and the like. But the effective recognition of citizens as equal adults with the capacity to make political choices is a minimal condition for being a liberal democracy (p. 48).

Within the tradition of liberal democracy, then, what kind of leadership, and what kind of politics, might best enable us to manage conflict well between people who want and value different things—at the very least, to minimise domination, humiliation, cruelty and violence; and then, so far as possible, to achieve “a whole lot more than this”?

1.2 Leadership in Public Life

This section:

  • Distinguishes between leaders and leadership;

  • Asks what kind of public leadership and what kind of politics might take us beyond “heroic” models of leadership and constrain managerialism in public administration; and

  • Summarises some emerging themes in recent scholarship on ethical public leadership.

1.2.1 Leaders and Leadership

When asked for the most important advice he would give an aspiring leader, Sir Bob Jones, a New Zealand property investor, author and former politician, replied: “The most important piece of advice I would give an aspiring leader is to do the decent thing and cut your throat” (Jones, 2015).

I share Sir Bob’s suspicion of people who claim or want to be leaders of the “heroic”, follow-me sort. With the hindsight of history, so-called great leaders have too often been incongruent in their private lives and/or brutal in their public lives. Their lauded success may mask a legacy of debt, corruption and/or institutional weakness that others are left to deal with long after the great leader has bowed off the stage.

I do, however, respect people who show leadership. Leadership as I understand it is more a function than a role, action more than status, character more than title. Leadership is exercised by individuals, teams, groups and networks stepping up, in particular places at particular points in time to seize opportunities, manage risks, respond to threats, create value and do the right thing.

In a review essay, Crosby and Bryson (2018, p. 1268) note that in recent years, leadership studies have begun to move away from “leader” talk. The trend is in the direction of shared, distributed and integrative leadership.Footnote 4

Turning specifically to public leadership, Hartley (2018) notes that much of the literature has focused on those who have formal authority in government and public services. Public officials are not, however, the only people who exercise leadership in the public sphere that aims in some way to address social issues and problems of collective action (‘t Hart, 2014, p. 22). Public leadership is also exercised by individuals, groups and networks in the community and voluntary sector, the private sector, academia and the mass media.

What is evolving is a new model of public leadership that is network-based, facilitative, collaborative and grounded in public values. These “new leadership dialogues” depict traditional leadership theory as “too hierarchical, heroic, and power-centric; … too disconnected from ethical values; and … too biased towards logical positivist methods” (Van Wart, 2013, p. 535). They urge attention to ethical dimensions of public leadership and recognisable patterns of characteristics and behaviours, or leadership practices.

Brad Jackson and Ken Parry have developed a framework originally proposed by Keith Grint (2005) that focuses our attention on how leadership is created, rather than on how leaders are created. The framework suggests six ways of thinking about leadership:

  • Leadership through Position: WHO has the formal power to create leadership?

  • Leadership through Person: WHO has the informal power to create leadership?

  • Leadership through Process: HOW is leadership created?

  • Leadership through Performance: WHAT is achieved through leadership?

  • Leadership through Place: WHERE is leadership created?

  • Leadership through Purpose: WHY is leadership created? (Jackson & Parry, 2018, p. 8).

I share this interest in the where, what, why, how and who of leadership, particularly the kind of leadership and the kind of politics that might enable us to work well in public life with people who want and value different things.

1.2.2 Constraining Managerialism

Managerialism is an ideology that originated in the private (for-profit) sector and has since been extended into the public and not-for-profit sectors. It has been evident particularly in the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and Australia following the application in the 1980s and 1990s of New Public Management (NPM) and New Public Governance (NPG) techniques and practices to public administration.Footnote 5

Managerialism is characterised by:

  • Hierarchical management—managers receive and respond to goals set from above and ensure these are delivered by those below them;

  • A belief that organisations are more similar than different, so the performance of any and every organisation can be improved by generic management skills and theory; and

  • Experience and skills specific to that organisation’s core business are of secondary importance (Klikauer, 2015; O’Reilly & Reed, 2010).

In New Zealand, for example, I have seen a culture of managerialism in the state sector reflected in:

  • An over-reliance on restructuring as successive chief executives seek to establish their power and make their mark on government agencies;

  • Appointment of chief executives and senior managers who lack relevant technical expertise and institutional experience;

  • A relative de-valuing of staff below managerial level who do possess technical expertise and institutional memory (referred to pejoratively by some public managers as “policy wonks” or “pointy-heads”);

  • A perceived decline in the quality and robustness of free and frank public policy advice; and

  • Deteriorating compliance with public records and official information legislation.Footnote 6

Reflecting on public administration in Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, Roderick Rhodes (2016) has argued that the pendulum has swung too far toward NPM/NPG and needs to swing back toward “the craft of public administration” and recovery of the skills of counselling, stewardship, practical wisdom, probity, judgment, diplomacy and political nous.

I am looking for the kind of leadership and the kind of politics that take us beyond “heroic” models of leadership and NPM/NPG managerialism, and that keep ethics at the centre of public life.

1.2.3 Ethical Public Leadership

Crosby and Bryson (2018, p. 1274) note that to date relatively few researchers pay explicit attention to the publicness of public leadership and the public values that ideally underpin it. Some starting points they suggest include Burns’s (1978, 2003) view of leadership as the exercise of power for ethical ends, the ethics of relational leadership (Maak & Pless, 2006; Rost, 1991), and research that links leadership studies with public value theory.Footnote 7

Keeping ethics at the centre of public life means thinking and deliberating together about the principles that frame how we are to live well with one another (James, 2006, p. 294). When faced with a choice between two or more options, our ethical principles work to guide and constrain our choice. They help us do the right thing, the right way and for the right reason (Ciulla, 2005, p. 331). Our ethical principles are stars we steer by. They also provide a point of reference for subsequent reflection on and social evaluation of our choices and actions.Footnote 8

This book is a contribution to thinking about leadership, ethics and public life. I began by thinking about interpersonal competencies that I have had to cultivate when working in public life with people who want and value different things. I did not want, however, to create another set of competencies for managerialist types to add to their “toolbox”, the better to manage and manipulate politics and public life.

For this reason, I set out to reflect on interpersonal competencies in relation to political and social theory about pluralism, rights and interests, and a set of political values (freedom, equality, fairness and community) for social problem solving in contexts of pluralism. By reflecting on and applying political theory and social ethics in this way, I have framed a limited set of competencies (soft skills) as ethical competencies (hard soft skills) for public leadership. I define each competency behaviourally, as mutually reinforcing leadership practices in contexts of pluralism: When working with people who want and value different things, I will be … civil, diplomatic, respectful, impartial, fair and prudent.

The focus of this book is thus both narrower and broader than people skills for public policy (cf. Mintrom, 2003). It is narrower, because it focuses on a limited set of competencies for working well with people who want and value different things. It is broader because it frames these practices as ethical competencies for public leadership, presented as personal resolutions.

I offer the six competencies as a counter to and constraint on managerialism in public administration, and as encouragement to keep ethics at the centre of a pluralist democratic politics. This is important because, as Noel Preston (1994) observed, “Nothing is more dangerous to the well-being of the body politic than a public official who is technically competent or strategically astute but ethically illiterate or unfit” (p. 1).

1.3 Competencies for Public Leadership

This section:

  • Describes a shift in focus in public policy education from training policy analysts to cultivating leadership;

  • Introduces the concept of a competency and a competency framework; and

  • Proposes to frame a limited set of interpersonal competencies (soft skills) as ethical competencies (hard soft skills) for public leadership in contexts of pluralism.

1.3.1 From Training Analysts to Cultivating Leadership

Francis Fukuyama (2018b), in an essay on What’s wrong with public policy education, reflects that since the 1970s, public policy education in most American universities has focused on training students to be policy analysts. Dominated by the discipline of economics, programmes have concentrated on teaching students “a battery of quantitative methods that are useful in policy analysis: applied econometrics, cost-benefit analysis, decision analysis, and, most recently, use of randomized experiments for program evaluation.”

In his work at Stanford University, Fukuyama is calling for a shift of focus—from training policy analysts to educating leaders who can accomplish things in the real world:

There is no question that these [policy analysis] skills are valuable and should be part of a public policy education… . But being skilled in policy analysis is woefully inadequate to bring about policy change in the real world. Policy analysis will tell you what the optimal policy should be, but it does not tell you how to achieve that outcome. The world is littered with optimal policies that don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of being adopted.

We need a different sort of public policy education in a broader set of skills. At the heart of Fukuyama’s proposal is a focus on stakeholder analysis:

Stakeholder analysis is something that every successful politician in the world has performed from the beginning of time. That is the essence of politics: generating sufficient power by gathering allies and undermining opponents; it’s just that good politicians don’t apply a structured methodology to this task.Footnote 9

The so-called soft skills are critical to working well with stakeholders who want and value different things. The Collins English Dictionary (2012) defines soft skills as “desirable qualities for certain forms of employment that do not depend on acquired knowledge: they include common sense, the ability to deal with people, and a positive flexible attitude.” Soft skills for public leadership include people skills (interpersonal competencies) but extend beyond these to emotional intelligence, attitudes, dispositions and what we call political nous (or savvy).

Public policy education has not generally set out to cultivate this set of skills in an intentional way. This is beginning to change, as Fukuyama has signalled. An increasing number of public policy education programmes focus on improving public leadership, working with “policy actors” and “stakeholders”, and developing interpersonal competencies, including the abilities to understand and work with conflicting values and ethical commitments.Footnote 10

The critical importance of interpersonal competencies is also gaining recognition in public sector training and development programmes. A New Zealand Institute of Public Administration discussion paper, The future public servant, argues that the public service will require a broader and different set of leadership skills to reflect and leverage the benefits of diversity, and to be collaborative and capable of sophisticated co-creation in multi-actor policy ecosystems. The paper concludes:

Employers cannot easily predict the impact of technology and changing customer demand on the nature of work and specific jobs. However, employers can more easily predict the types of skills, attributes and dispositions that they will look for in future employees. This is equally true for government as an employer. Current and future public servants will need a depth of transferable skills to match their technical competencies (IPANZ, 2018, p. 4).

This book is a contribution to education and training that cultivate the kind of public leadership and the kind of politics that can achieve real change in local contexts.

1.3.2 Competency Frameworks

Competence is a cluster of related knowledge, skills, attitudes and personal characteristics that enables someone to do a job consistently well. We describe a person as “competent” when they can be relied on to do a good job.

A competency is a set of defined behaviours that an employer can use to identify, evaluate and develop competence in an individual or team.Footnote 11

A competency framework identifies a set of competencies (or capabilities) that we expect to be demonstrated in a job, role or team. Public-domain frameworks are often oriented to a profession, industry or role. Private or in-house frameworks are developed and used within an organisation or company (Holt & Perry, 2011, p. 11) and have been since the 1970s (Finch-Lees, Mabey, & Liefooghe, 2005, p. 1186). Competency frameworks have been widely used and adapted as in-house frameworks in the public sector since at least the 1990s.

Identifying and presenting a set of competencies in a formal, structured way (a competency framework or model) is a useful human resource management tool throughout the employment life cycle of recruitment and selection, performance management and appraisal, training and development, and succession planning (du Gay, Salaman, & Rees, 1996; Lucia & Lepsinger, 1999, p. 5; Holt & Perry, 2011). Some benefits of using a competency framework across the employment life cycle are summarised in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1 Benefits of using competency frameworks across the employment life cycle
Full size table

Because competence involves knowledge, skills, attitudes and personal characteristics, competencies range from highly concrete proficiencies, like the ability to use a software package, to more personal and less tangible characteristics and capabilities, like emotional intelligence and political nous. While aspects of our aptitude and personality traits are innate, they can be modified—and described, measured, developed and assessed when translated into behavioural terms (Lucia & Lepsinger, 1999, pp. 5–6).

The key point is that to be useful, we need to describe competencies as a set of observable behaviours that we can assess as a basis for human resource management and organisational learning and development. We also need to be able to describe the behaviours of individuals and teams who are under-skilled in a competency. This is important because “incompetent people tend to see themselves as more competent than they actually are, whereas more competent people tend to see themselves as less competent than they actually are (Holt & Perry, 2011, p. 4; Kruger & Dunning, 1999).

To be effective in politics and public policy, we need to acquire and apply several “families” of competencies. The OECD (2014), for example, classifies its jobs into three broad roles: executive leadership; policy research, analysis and advice; and corporate management and administration. Its competency framework (Table 1.2) identifies three families of core competencies that are important across all jobs:

  • Delivery-related (achieving results);

  • Interpersonal (building relationships); and

  • Strategic (planning for the future).

Table 1.2 Core competencies that are important across all jobs (OECD, 2014)
Full size table

The framework identifies competencies for different levels or roles, with descriptions of behaviours that demonstrate the various competencies.Footnote 12

This book does not describe all the practised behaviours required to exercise public leadership well. Any competency framework reflects only a fragment of the complexity that is effective leadership (Bolden & Gosling, 2006, p. 147). Rather, I focus on a limited set of linked, mutually reinforcing leadership practices for working well in public life with people who want and value different things.

Each of the following six chapters concludes with a competency that I describe behaviourally. You can see them laid out together in the Appendix, together with behaviours that indicate a person is under-skilled in each of the six competencies.

1.3.3 Ethical Competencies for Public Leadership

It has become common for public sector agencies to define the values or principles they expect to shape how we go about our work with our customers/stakeholders and with one another. My employer, the Canterbury Regional Council, adopted a set of five values we have worked with since 2015:

  • People first—people, customers and staff come first;

  • Integrity—trust in us and our information;

  • Stewardship—good decisions today for tomorrow;

  • Can do—be brave and make it happen; and

  • Collaboration—together works best.

Every government agency I have worked in since 2003 has had some such set of values or principles, which accompany or are stated in a code of ethics employees must subscribe to as part of entering into an employment agreement.Footnote 13

Michael Mintrom’s (2012) chapter on “Doing ethical policy analysis” introduces five ethical principles for public policy making, following Thomas Plante (2004): integrity, competence, responsibility, respect and concern.

My own thinking and writing on ethics and public policy (Bromell, 2010, 2017) has drawn on Kenneth Winston’s six moral competencies for the practice of democratic governance: civility; fidelity to the public good; respect for citizens as responsible agents; proficiency in democratic architecture; prudence; and “double reflection” (Winston, 2003, 2008, 2010).

As we have seen (Sect. 1.2.2), Rhodes (2016) urges recovery of the skills of counselling, stewardship, practical wisdom, probity, judgment, diplomacy and political nous.

I have not set out to construct a comprehensive framework of competencies—or virtues—for public leadership.Footnote 14 I have sought to identify a limited set of mutually reinforcing leadership practices for working well (effectively and ethically) in contexts of pluralism. I propose six ethical competencies for public leadership, which I state in the form of personal resolutions: When exercising leadership in public life with people who want and value different things, I will be … civil, diplomatic, respectful, impartial, fair and prudent.

There are other competencies—and virtues—that are certainly worth cultivating and practising if we want to live well and lead good lives,Footnote 15 but in the busyness of everyday work and life I cannot keep too many ideas in my head at the same time. In my experience, the six competencies of being civil, diplomatic, respectful, impartial, fair and prudent provide me with sufficient stars to steer by (Sect. 8.3) when working in public life with people who want and value different things.

Applying political theory and social ethics to frame a set of soft skills as ethical competencies (hard soft skills) takes us into a space where our personal growth intersects with our professional performance. The six competencies require us to think both about the right thing to do and the sort of person we need to be and become in order to do the right thing.

Merely knowing or thinking about competencies does not, of course, make us competent, any more than knowing or thinking about values makes us ethical. Developing ethical competencies for public leadership is like muscle building (Sect. 8.4)—it requires persistent effort; a quality training programme; an optimal diet (ideas and other stimuli to thinking, imagination and aspiration); a calculated degree of overload; and time to rest and recover.

Jackson and Parry (2018, pp. 1–4) talk about “studying” leadership as well as exercising it. They cite Concise Oxford English Dictionary definitions of “study” that include devoting time and thought to acquiring information, especially from books; securing something by pains or attention (as a pianist, I think of the studies or études I have practised to acquire technique); and the act of observation, musing and reverie. Studying leadership, they suggest, involves doing, seeing, talking, reading and writing (p. 3).Footnote 16 All five activities assume thinking, reflecting and musing.

We cannot grow in public leadership if we are always busy doing. We cannot do the right thing if we never stop to think deeply about the right thing to do—or about what kind of person we want to be, and how we need to relate to others in order to do the right thing (Lawton & Macaulay, 2009, p. 110). We need to take time to stand back, reflect, read, discover new ideas, think new thoughts and resolve how we wish to be, become and behave in the practice of public leadership.

1.4 Structure and Contents

This introductory chapter has set out the question the book seeks to address and some assumptions that lie behind it. It has distinguished between leaders and leadership and summarised some recent thinking about public leadership in reaction to managerialism in public administration. It has noted an emerging shift of focus in public policy education from training policy analysts to cultivating leadership; introduced the idea of competencies and competency frameworks; and proposes to draw on political theory and social ethics to frame a set of ethical competencies for working well in public life with people who want and value different things.

Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 are written to an identical structure of wondering, reflecting and resolving.

Wondering poses problems and puzzlement at why we behave as we do, how we got to where we are and what we mean by the claims we assert. It also captures an element of wonder at the awesome and awful ways we treat one another.

Reflecting introduces some political and moral theory and ways of framing our thinking about the right thing to do within the tradition of political liberalism.

Resolving has the sense of identifying pathways through complex and difficult problems. It also invites a personal resolution: I will be … [an adjective that describes a competency]. Each competency is in turn described by a set of behaviours we can learn, practice and measure.

Chapter 2, Pluralism, Tribalism and Civility, elaborates on the challenge of pluralism for politics and public life—diversity and super-diversity, “us” and “them” tribalism, the relative importance of personal identities, social identities and human identity for politics and public policy, and questions of diversity and value. The corresponding competency for public leadership is to be civil.

Chapter 3, Rights, Interests and the Public Interest, explores rights claims as a reaction to pluralism and argues that in general, public policy goes better when we refrain from asserting non-negotiable rights claims and instead negotiate our competing and conflicting interests “in the public interest”—or at least re-frame rights as publicly justified claims about extraordinarily significant basic interests. Exercising public leadership requires skills in negotiation and conflict resolution, so by analogy with international relations, the corresponding competency for public leadership is to be diplomatic.

Chapters 4, 5, 6, 7 introduce four political values as stars to steer by in public life: freedom, equality, fairness and community.

Chapter 4, Freedom, Toleration and Respect, affirms freedom as a priority value in a pluralist democratic politics then tests some boundaries of applying this in practice. The chapter reflects on the meaning and importance of freedom, liberty-limiting principles that may justify restrictions on freedom, and limits to tolerance (and tolerance of intolerance) under the rule of law. The corresponding competency for public leadership is to be respectful of our own and others’ freedom to lead lives we have reason to value.

Chapter 5, Equality, Identity and Impartiality, asks “equality of what?” It reflects on the basis of human equality, what it means to treat one another as equals, and questions about recognition of persons and groups, special measures and redress of historical injustices. Affirming the basic equality of human persons corrects and constrains an over-enthusiasm for freedom. In public administration, the principle of basic equality implies above all that we ought not behave as if there are different sorts of citizens, some of whom may be treated markedly better (or worse) than others. The corresponding competency for public leadership is to be impartial.

Chapter 6, Fairness, Justification and Transparency, asks what “a fair go” means in public life. It reflects on fairness in terms of context, relationships and time and suggests a framework for assessing both fair process and fair outcomes through transparent public reasoning. We will never achieve perfect justice, but we can work together to minimise domination, humiliation, cruelty and violence and make our life together at least a little better than it is now. The corresponding competency for public leadership is to be fair.

Chapter 7, Community, Reciprocity and Sustainability asks whether government has a legitimate role in fostering “the good society”. It reflects on state neutralism and perfectionism and whether in liberal pluralist societies it is legitimate to articulate a national identity and national values. How might we balance freedom with belonging, avoid short-termism in politics and public policy, provide sound governance that safeguards the interests of generations yet unborn and embrace a politics of caring, hope and kindness? The corresponding competency for public leadership is to be prudent.

Chapter 8, Conclusion: Building Ethical Muscle, summarises the kind of leadership and the kind of politics needed wherever diversity in proximity generates conflict. Governance and management, human resource management, organisational learning and development, and workplace mentoring all have roles to play in cultivating ethical competencies for public leadership. We build ethical muscle as together we reflect on who we are, how we are with others, and the values and virtues we want to govern our conduct of a pluralist democratic politics.

I am not an expert on the complex matters I have had to consider in working all this out for myself. I am a public policy practitioner and an intentional generalist. I have drawn, magpie-like, on the thinking and ideas of a great many people as I try to make sense of hard questions in politics and public life. The references, footnotes and cross-references scattered through each chapter are a trail of breadcrumbs laid, as in the Brothers Grimm tale of Hansel and Gretel, to mark the ways I have travelled and to indicate how I came to arrive at certain rest stops, if not outright destinations. I offer them as way-markers for your own wondering, reflecting and resolving as you exercise ethical public leadership.